Playing AVCHD on MAC?

Hello,

I just got a new MBP and a new Sony HDR-SR12 camera, and after recording on the camera about 10 hours of important for me video (me+wife Hawai trip, etc) I found it imposible to connect it to my MBP.

I call APPLE and they told me it's because mixed footage (I did record 2 clips in SD, and all the rest in full HD), so iMovie and Final Cut Express (which I also purchased with the MBP) is good for nothing in this case: won't import any video from the camera. FCE supports my camera (on the apple website at least) but not in my case. I erased the SD clips but nothing changed.

I ended up paying another 150$ for Roxio Titanium Pro which says that plays AVCHD movies, but I will see after I am done downloading.

I am really pissed off, I spent like 5-6 hours trying to figure it out, calling Apple and researching the web and in the end I had to pay another $150 to make it work (probably). There are other cheaper options that crash on files over 1.2GB or have other problems. (many of my files are over that).

And to make it worse, on my PC with Win7 works like a charm, I don't even have to install Sony software or any other codecs/decoders: plain WindowsMediaPlayer does it with no problems. I also see the first frame of the movie in the Explorer, which again won't show up in Finder. I can play the files right from the camera, or copy them to HDD and run the from here, raw AVCHD with no issues..

What can I do to make Apple wake up and fix the problem? On the phone they said it's all about Sony making software for PCs, but I didn't install the crap that comes with the camera from Sony on the PC and still works. Actually Win7 was installed like a week ago, fresh, with nothing else but MS Office on it.

I want to take the RAW file and Play it from the camera or from the HDD or from ANYWHERE. Also, I want to just import the file into FinalCutExpress ( since it is supposed to SUPORT AVCHD format). And I want to see the thumbail in the Finder. Do I ask for too much? Can't they build a plugin for QT that will do the trick? Or in this case is MS really better?

"Advance your moviemaking.
Work with DV, HDV, or AVCHD footage — or all three — in a single Timeline, sculpting your video quickly and precisely using pro-level editing and trimming tools. Final Cut Express 4 supports a virtually unlimited number of video tracks, lets you add "... blablablah

 

AVCHD has been an issue with OSX for a while now. The issue is that not every camera records the same way, so they can support one model, while a new one comes out and may record differently.
There are various converters for AVCHD to comparable mac formats, that may work for your camera.
FCP also has better support for avchd since some professional cameras are using it now. BUT I'm not guaranteeing that your camera will work for it.
I would suggest in the future, do a test clip with a camera before you keep it to see if it works on the mac, if not you can return it.
The move into HD has caused many problems in both the consumer and professional worlds, as there are so many different ways that it can be recorded and formatted.
So yea, the only thing I can suggest, if you havnt already tried it, is in FCE, go into File>Log and Transfer, while you have your camera connected, and it should pick it up. If its a new camera, maybe not.
Or you can export all the footage on a PC to a format the mac likes, and then work on it. Video footage can be a pain.

 

The technology in the camera is like one year old (on the market!), maybe older. Apple should come up with something that works just fine, since it's in the supported models. Unfortunatelly, after spending 1200$ for the camera I find it hard to buy another one, returning timeframe is gone now -with all the trips I did right after buying the camera- and the video footage on it is pretty important to me.

I tried Roxio Toast Player on Mac with no succes, it will play the files I have but only like 1 second out of 5, than it freezes and for the other 4 seconds shows the same frame. It will play again about a second, only to freeze again the other 4. I am rounding up of course, I didn't count exactly. So spending the $150 on Roxio suite didn't pay for now.
I still have to try their converter, I did some conversions but didn't work with FCP, although the resulting files are MOV it still won't open them. Probably the codec I tried was wrong!
Does anybody know what should I choose? To make it work with FCP!
I have the following options:
1.Digital Video
2.High Definition Video HDV
3.H.264 Player
4.MPEG 4 Player
5.QuickTime Movie.
I really want to keep the same quality, now it's looking sharp when there is not much movement in the footage. Still is not the best camera, the video is shaky sometimes altought I really tried to keep it steady, losing even more quality would be a deal breaker.

 

So you're just trying to play back avchd? Give VLC a try, or Perian + Quicktime.

 

Why not just edit the movie on your Windows 7 machine?

 

Which FCP version are you using the newest does support AVCHD but you have to convert it. If you use the apple 442 anamorphic HD it does a pretty good job.

FCP Express 4 also has this conversion.

And just to let you know AVCHD is here to stay so no turning back.

And yes Sony tends to be a pain with their stuff.

 

Are you using FCE or FCP? in first post you mention FCE, then FCP in second post.

Either way, "Log and Transfer" doesn't work when you have the camera plugged in?

 

Both VLC and Perian can only play like 50 frames every 200... Pretty much the same experience as with the Roxio player. I did try everything I was able to find on the web to play AVCHD.

Roxio converter will convert my files, but for now I didn't find the best encoding way to keep the quality and to still be able to open in FCE. The thing is all files converted with Roxio will play smooth and nice, all are full HD 1920x1080, but some won't import into FCE (like HDV with Apple intermediate codec won't; converted to quicktime HD will). But even those which I can import won't play smooth at all in the FCE and won't show the frames as you moves the mouse over them. Is this something I should expect with full HD?

I run on a brand new MBP 2.66Ghz, 4GB ram with 128GB SSD. My desktop is a Quad2.8Ghz, with 4GB RAM, win7 on it, stronger but I don't see the laptop as chocked or anything, the CPU never goes over 60% usage unless Roxio conversion runs..

FCE, sorry for confusion ..
Nope, Log and Transfer will not show up. I did open it myself and still there is nothing inside. If I manually try to add a folder or files it gives me the standard error message, something like: "There are no compatible files in these folder to import". Apple said the camera is corrupted or something .. that I should try to format it and they record something and then import again, it should work. Even if that works I still have my 70GB of video data that I NEED in AVCHD files ... I don't think is corrupted cause all files play smooth on the PC; also the files play on the camera with no issues.

 

I have a lot of video editing to do, and if I learn it (while doing this files) why not learn it on the Mac? I am kinda new to video editing, I did some basic crops and stuff on the PC but ..

And I bought FCE with that in mind: learn how to use it and just plain use from now on.
Besides, after spending 200$ on FCE and another 150$ on Roxio(mac) I really don't want to spend more on PC software. I don't want to count the $$$ on MBP into this equation, since I do use the laptop a lot besides video editing .. that is a good buy.

 

Are you using the old version of iMovie or FCE? If so, AVCHD will not be supported. As far as I know, the latest iMovie'9 and FC Express 4 are able to work with AVCHD footage, if you have not upgraded them to the newest version, I'm afried you need use an AVCHD converter or MTS/M2TS converter to do format conversion in advance.

 

Decompress it in Windows and then edit it on the MBP.